At least temporarily.
Facing intransigent Republican opposition, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, on Tuesday delayed a vote on legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, dealing another setback to Republicans’ seven-year effort to dismantle the health law and setting up a long, heated summer of health care battles.
NYT
Perhaps, but also saving a great deal of face since they obviously couldn't convince the few dissenting Republicans to buckle under.
Mr. McConnell, the chief author of the Senate repeal bill, can afford to lose only two of the 52 Republican senators, but more than a half-dozen have, for widely divergent reasons, expressed deep reservations about the bill.
That's what I said.
The delay pushes Senate consideration of the bill until after a planned recess for the Fourth of July, but it does not guarantee that Republican senators will come together. Opponents of the bill, including patient advocacy groups and medical organizations, plan to lobby senators in their home states next week. Senators are likely to be dogged by demonstrators.
[...]
Mr. Trump, meeting with Republican senators at the White House, declared, “We’re getting very close.”
“This will be great if we get it done,” he said. “And if we don’t get it done, it’s just going to be something that we’re not going to like, and that’s O.K., and I understand that very well.”
What the fuck does that mean? Meh? Trump shrugs and walks away? After all, it doesn't have anything to do with him personally, so he's really not particularly interested. He'll just quit tweeting about how Obamacare is failing.
“I would hope, by the end of the week, that we have reached basically a conclusion with regard to the substance and the policy of this,” said Senator John Thune of South Dakota, a member of the Senate Republican leadership.
It hasn't worked for seven years. It's hard to see how a few more days would fix this ratfuck. On the other hand...
Mr. Schumer said: “We know the fight is not over. That is for sure.” Over the next few weeks, he said, Mr. McConnell “will try to use a slush fund to buy off Republicans, cut back-room deals, to try and get this thing done.”
We all know how easily a Republican can be bought. Then again, there's Rand Paul and Susan Collins. I don't think they'll budge, slush fund or no.
After Mr. McConnell’s announcement, three other Republicans announced their opposition to the bill in its current form: Jerry Moran of Kansas, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Rob Portman of Ohio.
Bringing the number up to eight.
Obviously, the CBO score released on Monday fcked up what shit the Republicans had left after Dean Heller's defection fcked their shit up good and proper last week. The only smart move they had left was to avoid having any recorded vote on their big tax-cut bill at all. Having the motion-to-proceed fail, which it likely would have, would've been worse in some ways that having the bill itself fail, a statement that the bill was so fundamentally and deeply toxic that it was poisonous even to talk about it. Now, they have a space of time for Mitch McConnell to work his magic.
Charles P Pierce
Old Magic Mitch.
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